Grit Lab Report

Hi Jamie,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 2: I have 2 or 3 emerging interests but am unsure how to figure out which one to pursue .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were benevolence, achievement, and tradition.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was agreeableness.

You said your top three talents were social, verbal, and kinesthetic.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you had a pretty good idea about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to do well in classes .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Finish editing photography galleries .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Finishes something on my to-do list .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Procrastination and busy schedule .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I finish getting ready for bed, then I spend 30 minutes working on editing galleries. .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in Dance .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt Ashamed when receiving critical feedback, and Ashamed when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling a lot of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being future .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as Work .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .

In one word, you said it made you feel Loved .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

"Success is about the journey, not the destination."
Interest is what fuels passion and perseverance which is grit. We should take time to explore our interests before diving fully into one interest.
Talent is what you are naturally/easily good at.
It's not morally better to be grittier.
Implementation intentions really work to increase goal completion!!!
expertise depends on more than just innate talent
Advice benefits the advisor
Allostasis is good. Allostatic load is bad.
Willpower alone doesn't work. Change situation first
Find multiple mentors! They can serve different purposes.
You can be a giver sustainably.

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Talia Sacks
I wanted to take a moment to express my immense gratitude for the exceptional qualities you bring to our team. Your presence has been a source of incredible positivity, and I truly appreciate your calming influence and warm presence. In the high-pressure environment we often find ourselves in, your ability to maintain composure and spread a sense of tranquility has been invaluable. Your motivational skills have not gone unnoticed either; there were numerous instances where your words of encouragement and wisdom boosted team morale and made our discussions so much more interesting. It's clear that you possess a rare blend of empathy and leadership and I wish you nothing but success in the future. Turning to your Discovery project presentation, I was thoroughly impressed by your passion for photography. The creation of a website to facilitate bookings showcased your entrepreneurial spirit and a strategic approach to turning your hobby into a sustainable income stream. The website's design and functionality were not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly user-friendly, reflecting your meticulous attention to detail. It was evident that you had thoroughly researched to optimize the user experience, which undoubtedly contributed to the project's success.
Yuka Nakada
Jamie is a great teammate, always energetic and willing to share her insights on the weekly readings during our discussions. I love to hear her thoughts and experiences, and she is very friendly and a great listener as well. It was great to get to know about her weekly activities and reflections, as well as her personality and passions throughout this semester. Jamie always demonstrated compassion towards her family and friends, and I am very happy we got to meet each other in Grit Lab. Her discovery project on photography was very interesting, and I really enjoyed hearing more about her passion for taking pictures of her loved ones. I was happy to hear about Jamie’s progress as she worked on expanding her hobby and creating a website. Seeing her pictures and the final website design was great, and I was so proud of Jamie for her hard work. I was inspired to work harder on my hobbies myself so that someday I could also create a website. Thank you so much for everything this semester, Jamie!
Laura Baeyens
I really enjoyed getting to know Jamie over the course of the semester. It was clear to me that Jamie would always been listening to what I was saying. Not only did she listen, but she remembered what I said from week to week, which made me feel heard. Jamie has a sweet personality, filling our group conversations with her calming presence. I know that because of these qualities she will succeed in whatever she puts her mind to. I really enjoyed learning about her progress on her Discovery project this past semester. I enjoyed hearing about her progress in making her photography website. I was excited to see the culmination of her hard work during her presentation. I have no doubt that the conscious steps she made this semester to launch her photography career will help her in the future.

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.